February 11, 2019 – The Bitfury Group and Longenesis announced a partnership with Medical Diagnostics Web (MDW) to bring new implementations in blockchain technology to MDW’s growing radiology marketplace.

The partnership between Bitfury, a full-service blockchain technology company, Longenesis, a startup that merges artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, and MDW radiology marketplace will create a next-generation platform for maintaining, sharing and securing medical imaging and diagnostics data.

MDW is the first radiology blockchain platform designed to connect all players in the medical imaging ecosystem to create an open and transparent marketplace for image interpretation. It allows radiologists to contract with imaging facilities and securely share patient data and medical images such as X-rays and computed tomography (CT) scans for interpretation.

The combination of new technologies, built on Bitfury’s Exonum private blockchain framework, will take the security of sensitive medical information to the next level, according to the companies. It will provide users with a more robust and discrete environment, while allowing transactions to be validated by nodes installed at a variety of respected sites, using “anchoring” technology to increase trust in recorded transactions.

Longenesis’ data management practices will ensure that medical data, while recorded transparently via blockchain, is accessible only by authorized parties in full compliance with HIPAA, GDPR and “right to forget.”

This advanced new infrastructure, with baked-in data anonymization, advanced encryption and user permissioning, complements MDW’s existing immutable blockchain audit trails and tamper-proof records of patient data that create safe and transparent way for users to exchange data and increase care quality, while improving efficiency and interoperability along the care continuum.

The MDW marketplace is already enabling radiology stakeholders to forge new business relationships. Radiologists enjoy immediate compensation for services, while radiology groups can access as-needed resources to boost reading volume, decrease exam turnaround time and attract new clients. AI companies benefit through access to the highly specialized annotated imaging datasets and raw imaging data required to train and validate algorithms.

The platform also helps solve many of today’s significant medical imaging problems, including service access and delivery, results communication and integration across the continuum of care.

MDW, Longenesis and Bitfury announced the partnership at the Healthcare information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2019 global conference and exhibition, Feb. 11-15 in Orlando, Fla.

A smart algorithm has been trained on a neural network to recognize the appearance of breast cancer in MR images. The algorithm, described at the SBI/ACR Breast Imaging Symposium, used deep learning, a form of machine learning, which is a type of artificial intelligence. Image courtesy of Sarah Eskreis-Winkler, M.D.

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